A reflection on the Lived Experience of Suicide Summit

The 2023 Lived Experience of Suicide Summit, held in Hobart in March, and hosted by Roses in the Ocean, was the largest lived experience of suicide gathering to have ever occurred in Australia, and potentially the world, with around 280 people in attendance. What an amazing achievement­.

The scene for the two-day event was set through the sharing of very powerful, challenging, and moving stories from people with their own lived experiences. The overwhelming message of these stories was that service providers can, and need to, be better at being more humane in their approach.

Along with my co-facilitator, Tynan Narywonczk, I ran a session on the second morning of the summit that explored the following two topics:

1.       How can we expand support from a focus on clinical services to an inclusion of a wide range of community-based options?

2.       How can we change services delivery from trying to get men to take up the services being offered (telling men to change), to changing our services to meet men where they are? 

We’re working on a summary of the responses to these questions, so I look forward to being able to share that soon.

Reflecting on the event afterwards and thinking through my own experience and that of others I have spoken to since, it became very apparent to me that it takes considerable energy to stay engaged in discussion and work around suicide. Sometimes, we can feel energised by positive stories, or by supporting others when they are dealing with challenges. We may feel inspired and motivated to continue our work because of these experiences. However, from personal experience, I have also learned how important it is to totally switch off for extended periods of time, following intense exposure to such challenging discussion and content. This is an important part of keeping ourselves well so that we can continue to be effective in our work.